Investigations

Investigations into employee misconduct can be extremely time consuming for management. If you receive an allegation of misconduct, you need to immediately start an investigation to ensure you obtain clear information from witnesses before their memories fade or get clouded by rumors or misinformation. Doing investigations yourself requires a significant investment of time. In-house investigation results can often be affected by the investigator’s personal feelings about colleagues. If you need an investigation, it is better to bring in an outside investigator to get a quick and unbiased evaluation of the situation.

EmCo’s founder, Bill Hoch, has almost 20 years as an attorney investigating allegations of misconduct, interviewing witnesses, and pouring over evidence. Bill’s experience has crossed most major areas of employee misconduct, including: allegations of harassment, discrimination, sexual harassment, retaliation, theft, ethics violations, drug use, bullying, pornography, misuse of company equipment, destruction of company property, or improper use of computers and the internet. Bill is equally comfortable interviewing witnesses and reviewing computer data or other hard evidence to determine what happened and who was involved. Whether the allegations involve a known complainant or an anonymous letter, Bill has experience getting to the bottom of a problem and helping companies determine how best to address proven misconduct.

EmCo understands that investigations work best when they are the least disruptive to your daily operations. That means the investigation has to be done quickly, quietly, and confidentially. EmCo will provide you with this level of service.

Often investigations provide an opportunity to improve your company. After the investigation is complete, EmCo can help review whether your company needs any policy or operational changes to ensure similar misconduct won’t happen again. Investigations often reveal loopholes in your policies or practices which employees will use to their advantage. If you determine your company has significant misconduct but a culture that discourages complaining, you may want EmCo to help implement an anonymous hotline. With EmCo, we will review all these matters with you as part of our investigation package.

If you believe you have employee misconduct, contact EmCo to discuss whether an investigation or internal review is necessary.